Owning your own home

That's what I've just done in an as-yet-unsent email, do you think that giving the end of October as a preferred completion date is too ambitious?

for the past year i had a friend living at my old flat but when i moved out i went to fully managed by a local estate agent. They found a tenant got him moved in and send me the money on the 1st of every month - that is until this month when the tenant decided not to pay because he's lost his job. Apparently he's managed to get benefits now and will be paying the rent tomorrow, but where do i stand? the agent tells me i can't evict him until he's not paid for 8 weeks. i don't have landlords insurance yet but starting to thing i really should have got some! anyone dealt with this before? i can't imagine it being easy to make a claim for this kind of thing

Kind of right.

To definitively evict someone for non-payment they need to be 2 periods in arrears, or persistently late with rent. The two periods things means that so long as you take rent in advance you can evict them the day after the second payment becomes due, most of the time this means one month and one day without payment.

You can go for possession before but most judges would think it unfair on the tenant and you'd not win - and to be fair if the bloke has lost his job the last thing he needs is to be made homeless because he's a bit late with the rent.

If they are late again and don't look like paying up, put in for an accelerated possession as soon as the second payment is overdue but be aware that :

The court might be busy so you might not be heard for weeks.
If they pay you a fiver they're suddenly not two periods behind and you might not get possession.
If you do get possession the judge will give them some time to move out, so you won't get the flat back immediately.
If after getting kicked out they don't leave you have to apply to the court to get the bailiffs in which could take a while.

Basically it doesn't have to be 8 weeks before you apply for possession but often it's a little while after that when you actually get it, hence the advice if to have 3 months' mortgage payment in hand in case this happens.

Google AST Grounds for Possession.

If he is outside the fixed period of the AST and you're worried about the future payments you could always give him his two periods' notice now and say you'll rescind it if he pays the next two months promptly.

EDIT : IANAL

google S.8 and S.21 procedure

you need to be careful which forms you use off the internet as some are out of date!

IAALBNYL

Just had our offer on a house accepted.

woo.

Nice one. Good luck with the frantic scrabble to get documents for a mortgage lender, assuming that's what's next.

you need to be careful which forms you use off the internet as some are out of date!

Since it looks like you're paying an agent a management fee they should be able to help with this.

I have found a small piece of land that would be perfect for my first self build. Has anyone had any experience in approaching a landowner?

Cheers,

yeah all the fun stuff is about to begin.

10 months later and I've finally gotten trough the process of renewing the lease on my flat.
Was helped by the surveyor James Hayes of Cooper Hayes. Recommended.
A thoroughly nice and helpful bloke. And as it turned out he's on this forum as he is a bit of a bike geek. Not sure of his forum name mind you.

^@princeperch ?

yep James is a good bloke and knows his stuff.

Today is the last day I can give notice to move out in October. Have the solicitors got back to me? Have they fuck.

Exactly the same situation here, had to drive to my solicitors and stand in front of their desk and make them phone the other solicitors to get an answer!

double stressful as we are 14 days into a 21 day exchange covenant, so everything has to go quickly, which is the opposite of how things normally happen!

Spoke to them this afternoon. The vendor's solicitors, the estate agent and my solicitors all say different things.

This sounds very interesting... and exciting for you. Good luck, I'd love to do a self build...

Many folks Walthstow/Leyton way? I'm thinking of moving out that way, found a 6 bed terrace house for less than my 2 bed flat in Bow, makes sense to move but wont do so for about a year, hopefully wont miss the boat.

For quite a while Leyton was considered scruffier than Leytonstone, and that's saying something. I reckon that will change as more people get used to the Olympic Park being there.

I'm at the north end of Leyton, near Walthamstow Village. There's been quite a bit of money pumped into the area by Waltham Forest council and it is starting to show.

@roboto and you lie it? I hear prices are cooling a bit (have stopped increasing as much) so hopefully find a bargain in a year... will be after a place that needs work so I can have my dream of a middle class conservatory and a pizza oven in the garden.

The area is good. We aren't particularly close to a main station. We're closer to Walthamstow Central than Leyton, but that doesn't bother me or the wife as we cycle most places. Little roboto is in a nice nursery a 5 minute walk away from our front door and there are a ton of schools to choose from.

The pubs in the village have the obvious craft ales available and there's a choice of pizza restaurants and butchers too. Epping Forest is on the doorstep too, if you ever feel like a quick 30 mile spin in the evenings.

Sounds ideal. Getting quite serious about it now... How good are the pizzas?

Not sampled them all yet. There is a place on Lea Bridge claiming to be the best in London...

Nuovo Mondragone in the Village is nice, but a bit pricey. The Rapha of NE London pizza.

pizza? pleazze, more like.

wake me up when your endz has a post-modern fried chicken joint with tenant's super & kimchi flavoured cocktails served in jam jars.

We have a hipster burger joint that has very little passing foot fall, so has extended it's lunchtime deals to cover the hours of 12-4pm.

See you in 12 months!

Although I've spent the last few years architecting houses for the great and good of London the prospect of buying seemed miles off until recently (which perhaps says a lot about the state of the profession more than anything). I'm hoping the rumours of the Leyton market cooling are true because I'm starting to look around that area as there's no chance we can afford anywhere we've rented recently. The housing stock there seems to be reasonable, but badly configured / period features removed. Not that I've got much cash left over for DIY anyway.